A 150,000-year climatic record from Antarctic ice

Lorius, C.; Jouzel, Jean; Ritz, Catherine; Merlivat, Liliane; Barkov, N. I.; Korotkevich, Y. S.; Kotlyakov, V. M.

doi:10.1038/316591a0

Cited by 602 publications

(308 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…D ansgaard a nd others, 1985Lorius a nd others, 1985;Ba rnola and others, 1987). Th ese ice sheets provide areas where there is positive balance and no m e lting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Some comments on climatic reconstructions from ice cores drilled in areas of high melt

Koerner

1997

J. Glaciol.

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ABSTRACT. Poor considerati on h as been g iven in m any Arctic circum-polar ice-core studi es to the effect of summer snow m elt on chemistry, stable-isotope concentrations and time-sca les. M a ny of th ese cores are drilled close to the firn line wh ere m e lt is intense. Some co me from below the Grn lin e w here accumulation is solely in the form of superimposed ice. In all cases, seasonal sign a ls are reduced or r emoved and, in some, time gaps develop during peri od s of excessive m elting which situ ate the drill site in t he ablation zone. Consequ ently, cross correlations of assumed sy nchronous events among th e cores are invalid, so that time-scales along the same cores differ between authors by factors of over 2. Many so -call ed clim atic sig nals a re im aginar y r a ther than real. By reference to published a na lyses of co res from the superimposed ice zone on Devon Ice Cap (Koerner, 1970) and Meighen Ice Cap (Koerner a nd PatersOJ1, 1974), it is shown how m elt affects all the norm ally well-es ta blished ice-core proxies and lead s to their misinte rpretation. D espite these limitations, the cores can give valuable low-resolution records for all or part of th e H olocene. T hey show that the thermal maximum in the circum-polar Arctic occurred in the early H olocene. This m ax imum, effected negative balances o n all th e ice caps a nd removed the small er ones. Cooler conditi ons in the second half of th e H olocene have ca used the rcgrowth of these sam e ice caps.

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“…D ansgaard a nd others, 1985Lorius a nd others, 1985;Ba rnola and others, 1987). Th ese ice sheets provide areas where there is positive balance and no m e lting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Some comments on climatic reconstructions from ice cores drilled in areas of high melt

Koerner

1997

J. Glaciol.

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“…The ice cores drilled at Vostok Station (78øS, 106øE) in Antarctica have provided an invaluable continuous record of paleoclimate extending over four glacial-interglacial cycles [Lorius et al, 1985;Jouzel et al, 1993Jouzel et al, , 1996Petit et al, 1997Petit et al, , 1999. Paleoclimatic conditions recorded therein include not only paleotemperatures, established using stable hydrogen isotope ratios [Jouzel et al, 1987], but also atmospheric composition, including gases and aerosols [Barnola et al, 1987 [Blunier et al, 1998] via shared signatory phenomena, as well as some combination of the above [Jouzel et al, , 1996Petit et al, 1997Petit et al, , 1999.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dating the Vostok ice core record by importing the Devils Hole chronology

Landwehr¹,

Winograd²

2001

J. Geophys. Res.

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Abstract. The development of an accurate chronology for the Vostok record continues to be an open research question because these invaluable ice cores cannot be dated directly. Depth-to-age relationships have been developed using many different approaches, but published age estimates are inconsistent, even for major paleoclimatic events. We have developed a chronology for the Vostok deuterium paleotemperature record using a simple and objective algorithm to transfer aj•es of major paleoclimatic events from the radiometrically dated 500,000-year 3løO-paleotemperature record from Devils Hole, Nevada. The method is based only on a strong inference that major shifts in paleotemperature recorded at both locations occurred synchronously, consistent with an atmospheric teleconnection. The derived depth-to-age relationship conforms with the physics of ice compaction, and internally produces ages for climatic events 5.4 and 11.24 which are consistent with the externally assigned ages that the Vostok team needed to assume in order to derive their most recent chronology, GT4. Indeed, the resulting V-DH chronology is highly correlated with GT4 because of the unexpected correspondence even in the timing of second-order climatic events that were not constrained by the algorithm. Furthermore, the algorithm developed herein is not specific to this problem; rather, the procedure can be used whenever two paleoclimate records are proxies for the same physical phenomenon, and paleoclimatic conditions forcing the two records can be considered to have occurred contemporaneously. The ability of the algorithm to date the East Antarctic Dome Fuji core is also demonstrated. Despite the care put into each construction, the differences between chronologies can be significant even in critical portions of the record, thereby permitting alternative interpretations about the causation of specific paleoclimatic events. Timing of Paleoclimatic EventsA precise and consistent vocabulary is necessary to discuss and compare the timing of specific paleoclimatic events. Emiliani [1955] defined the concept of marine isotopic stages to be geologic time periods exhibiting distinct paleotemperature ranges as deduced from marine core oxygen isotope time series. He identified a stage boundary to be the midpoint between the maxima and the minima of successive stages. Beginning with the number 1 for the current interglacial period, he assigned increasing integer labels to each successive period, with odd numbers denoting a warm stage and even numbers a cold stage.Broecker

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“…The Vostok project is a cooperative effort among Russia, the United States, and France [Vostok Project Members, 1995]; it was drilled in East Antarctica (78ø28'S, 106ø48'E), where the annual average temperature is m -55øC. The project involved drilling several holes [Lorius et al, 1985;Jouzel et al, 1987Jouzel et al, , 1993 [this issue], independantly from the 5D measurements of Petit et al [1999]. The deuterium profile is shown in Figure 1.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%